Frances Inglis (L) was jailed for life after killing Tom (R) with a heroin overdose

She added: 'I just am thankful to my family for supporting me. I was expecting to be convicted and I expected to go to prison.

'I knew what I was doing when I ended Tom's suffering. But this way, I've got a life sentence rather than Tom.'

Inglis injected her brain-damaged son with a fatal dose of heroin

Mrs Inglis, 57, from Dagenham, East London, was sentenced to life and a minimum term of nine
years after being found guilty of injecting Tom with the class A drug in November 2008.

The court heard she wanted to free him from the 'living hell' of permanent disability, disfigurement and round-the-clock care.

But she was found guilty of murder and told by the judge 'you cannot take the law into your own hands'.

Outside court her older son Alex, 26, said he and his family supported his mother '100 per cent' and demanded a change in the law on mercy killing.

He relayed the details of a phone call from his mother to the Mirror.

'We're devastated she's being punished for ending his life humanely. Tom was always really, really independent,' he told the paper.

'He always said, "Don't make a fuss". Being in that state, he would have hated it.'

Inglis, who worked as a carer for disabled children, first tried to end her son's life two months after the July 2007 accident when he was being treated at Queens Hospital in Romford, Essex.

His heart stopped for six minutes but he was revived.

She was charged with attempted murder before successfully trying again in November 2008, after barricading herself in her son's room at the Gardens nursing home in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire and supergluing the door.

Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, directed the Old Bailey jury that no-one had the 'unfettered right' to take the law into their own hands.

There were cries of 'shame on you' as jurors returned the verdicts, each by a majority of 10-2, but the judge told them: 'You could not have had a more difficult case.'

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Mother Frances Inglis who killed brain damaged son with heroin overdose says from prison: 'I'd do it again'